Crown of Serpents (50 page)

I found that a Scout of the Rebels, 30 in number had fallen in with the Right of our Line, and 22 of them been killed by the Rangers & Indians in that Quarter. A Lieut. who commanded the Party and a Private were taken. The Officer who is a very intelligent Person Says, their Army consists of near 5000 Continental Troops- 1500 of which are Rifle Men, commanded by General Sullivan and Brigadiers Hand, Poor and Clinton. They have but a month’s Provisions, and intend, according to his account, to come no further than Genesee- They have four Pieces of Cannon (the largest a Six Pounder) a Cohorn [mortar] and a Howitzer- They are building a strong Fort at Tioga and mean to keep a large Garrison there.24

Butler clearly stated that Boyd gave him the intelligence, which refuted Salmon’s account. So why then, if Butler gained this crucial intelligence, would he still turn Boyd over to the Indians? Some historians suggested that in the absence of Brant he was forced to hand the captives over. It is possible he could not control the Indians who were intent on revenge.25 However, if that were the case, it begs the question: why didn’t the Indians allow Boyd and Parker to leave the ambush alive?

Another theory claimed the Indians wanted revenge on Boyd specifically for the “unnecessary and cruel” killing of the old Tuscarora by Murphy in the deserted village. Yet the Indians themselves killed men, women, and children by the same means. They stalked them unseen, put a bullet or knife in their back, and then scalped them to show how brave they were. No historical evidence backs up this claim. However, the evidence clearly shows that Butler knew of Boyd’s Masonic protection by the following justification: he said that any Masonic obligations were overruled by theduty of an army officer to serve his King, and must not be invoked to protect rebels.26 This was in direct defiance of the sworn obligation of a Freemason to never deprive a fellow brother of his life or property, regardless of state loyalties. The “savage” Brant comprehended and embraced that tenet. Butler did not. He never played by the rules. He saw only one loyalty and that was to the British monarchy. He and his son Walter had never confirmed nor denied responsibility of Boyd and Parker’s deaths. According to Isabel Thompson Kelsay’s biography, Joseph Brant, Man of Two Worlds, “Butler said nothing, then or later. The two Butlers, father and son, never wanted to talk about atrocities they had seen.”27

In his 1901 book The Mohawk Valley, author W. Max Reid issued a scathing indictment of Butler and his son.

When their acts are compared with those of Joseph Brant, their deeds are the deeds of savages, and Brant’s the acts of a noble, generous man. The Butlers appear to have been, not only arrogant and supercilious in a high degree, but barbarous, treacherous, revengeful, ferocious, merciless, brutal, diabolically wicked and cruel; with the spirit of fiends they committed cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the Inquisition. No wonder their lives are not attractive to historians.28

Butler made another exculpatory statement. He claimed that after the examination Boyd was escorted to Niagara, but as he passed through Genesee, “an old Indian rushed out and tomahawked him.”29 Why fabricate this story when many individuals witnessed and participated in the actual torture killing? Was this a way to cover the betrayal he committed? The Continental soldiers who found the bodies the next day wrote of the many marks of torture inflicted, but none remarked on a single tomahawk wound.

A direct contradiction to Butler’s claim that one Indian tomahawked Boyd came a year later from the mouth of the Indian who said he led the party that captured Boyd. In George Beck’s Wyoming, written in 1858, this condensed version asserts:

On the 27th of March 1780, a party of Indians captured Lebbeus Hammond, Thomas Bennet with his son Andrew, a lad of thirteen or fourteen years of age, in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania….The lead Indian said he led the party that took Thomas Boyd up near the Genesee River, and he further said, ‘Boyd brave man – as good a soldier as ever fought against the red man.’… He said they tortured Boyd, cut off his fingers and toes, plucked out his eyes, etc., ‘still brave Boyd neither asked for mercy nor uttered a complaint. Ah! ‘brave Boyd’ knew very well the character of the Indians…He then brought out a sword and said, ‘There, Boyd’s sword.’ Hammond examined the sword and discovered the initials of Thomas Boyd’s name stamped on the blade near the hilt…That night Hammond, Bennet, and his son rose up on their captors, killed five of seven of them as they slept, and made their flight safely back to Wyoming [Valley.] The sword was brought away by Lebbeus Hammond, and was afterward presented to Lieutenant Boyd’s brother, Colonel John Boyd.30

Whatever way this tragedy is viewed, whether it was a woman’s curse or Boyd’s fatal mistakes, the historical evidence showed that Butler was the key person ultimately responsible for sentencing Boyd to death by the Indians. Ironically, the one person who tried to save Boyd’s life was an Indian.

The day after this tragedy the Continentals entered Genesee Castle. There, as dogs gnawed at the remains, they found the mutilated bodies of Boyd and Parker. They were given a ceremony and buried on the bank of Beard’s Creek under a copse of wild plum trees. Sullivan gave orders to burn everything in sight. Over 120 houses and several hundred acres of crops were razed. The long arduous campaign was over. It forever broke the back of the once mighty Iroquois Confederacy.

Thomas Boyd’s remains and the bodies of his fallen men were disinterred and transported to Rochester, NY in 1841 where they were reburied with honor on Patriots Hill in Mount Hope Cemetery.

1 W.P. Boyd, “The Life and Parentage of Lieut. Thomas Boyd Who Was Massacred Near Cuylerville, September 13, 1779” (abstracted from a paper that appeared in the published minutes for the thirteenth annual meeting of the Livingston County Historical Society, Livonia, NY, Tuesday, January 8, 1889).

2 William Congreve in The Mourning Bride of 1697.

3 Albert G. Mackey, Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Part 1 (Chicago: The Masonic History Company, 1909), 482.

4 John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799 (New

York: Greenwood Press, 1970), 190.

5 John Joseph Henry, Journal of John Joseph Henry, Esq. Campaign Against Quebec in 1775 (Lancaster: William Greer, 1812), 117.

6 William Barton, Journal of Lieutenant William Barton (published in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, Volume II, 1846-7), 11.

7 John Sullivan, Major General Sullivan’s Official Report (republished from a reprint of the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, October, 1779), 300.

8 John Niles Hubbard, Sketches of Border Adventures in the Life and Times of Major Moses Van Campen (Bath: R.L. Underhill & Co., 1842), 164. Firsthand survivor account of the Boyd ambush received immediately by Van Campen upon return of Timothy Murphy.

9 A. Tiffany Norton, History of Sullivan’s Campaign Against the Iroquois (Lima: Published by the author, 1879), 155.

10 Norton, 157.

11 Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Brant and Red Jacket (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1879), 282.

12 Ralph Adams Brown, ed., Notices of Sullivan’s Campaign, or the Revolutionary Warfare in Western New York (Port Washington: Kenikat Press, 1970, first published in 1842), 173.

13 John Norton, The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816 (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970), 277.

14 Mackey, 482.

15 George L. Marshall, Jr., “Chief Joseph Brant: Mohawk, Loyalist, and Freemason,” Early America Review (1998), http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/1998/brant.html

16 Marshall, 1998.

17 Isabel Thompson Kelsay, Joseph Brant 1743-1807 Man of Two Worlds (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984), 175.

18 William R. Denslow, 10,000 Famous Freemasons (Richmond: Macoy Publishing & Masonic Supply Co., Inc., 1957), 156, 178.

19 Kelsay, 251.

20 William L. Stone, Life of Joseph Brant-Thayendanegea (Albany: J. Munsell, 1865), 419.

21 Brown, 174.

22 James E. Seaver, Life of Mary Jemison, the White Woman (Buffalo: Matthews Bros. & Bryant, 1880, first published in 1824), 121, 122.

23 Boyd, 1889.

24 Prepared by the Division of Archives and History, The Sullivan-Clinton Campaign in 1779, Chronology and Selected Documents (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1929), 148, 149.

25 Kelsay, 267.

26 Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons (New York: Arcade Publishing, Inc., 1999), 103.

27 Kelsay, 267.

28 William Max Reid, The Mohawk Valley: Its Legend and Its History (New York: The Knickerbock Press, 1901), 227.

29 William W. Campbell, Annals of Tryon County; or, The Border Warfare of New York, During the Revolution (Cherry Valley: Cherry Valley Gazette Print, 1880), 137.

30 George Beck, Wyoming; Its History, Stirring Incidents and Romantic Adventures (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858), 291.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Karpovage is a native of western New York and a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology. Michael has worked in the design and marketing field for over twenty years as an art director and map illustrator. He also served as a volunteer firefighter for five years. He is a Freemason and lives in Roswell, Georgia.
Crown of Serpents
is his debut novel in The Tununda Mysteries.
Map of Thieves
is Book Two in the series.